Earliest known colour film goes on display at National Media Museum

The First Colour Moving Pictures at the National Media MuseumNational Media Museum

The oldest known colour film footage, dating from 1902, has gone
on display at the National Media
Museum in Bradford.

Using a method pioneered by photographer Edward Turner, the
short clips document scenes such as soldiers marching down the
street, a parrot on its perch, and his children playing in the
family home's garden in Hounslow.

The BBC
reports that the footage had been held in the BFI's
archives for several years, but due to the film's unusual size it
hadn't been possible to watch until now. Each frame had to be
scanned and digitised, then rebuilt into a moving video on a
computer -- a technique which has only recently become
possible.

Turner's camera worked by capturing black and white frames
through red, green and blue lenses. Combining the three frames
together gives a surprisingly clear colour image even if each
independent frame might appear as monochrome. It's similar to
the method which was used by Sergei Mikhailovich
Prokudin-Gorskii, most famous for his incredible colour photographs of rural Russia taken between
1909 and 1912.

Unfortunately, Turner died in 1903, before he could develop his camera
further. Cinema pioneer Charles Urban
tried to utilise Turner's method for his own films, but eventually
he plucked for a simpler, less vivid method which used a
combination of only two filters and gelatine dyes. Marketed as
Kinemacolor, it was first widely successful colour movie format,
and until now it was believed that the earliest surviving colour
film was the short "A Trip to the
Seaside", filmed in Kinemacolor in 1908.

In the embedded video, you can watch the staff of the National
Media Museum at Bradford discussing the restoration of the
film.